5/10/08 DISC: KS/OK/MO/AR/TX/MS/GA/AL

[Doug_Kiesling]

Wow, today all I can say is WOW after looking at the storm reports on SPC and seeing what is coming in on the network feeds.

Brandon was on the storms in SE Kansas and SW MO today and sent this footage in from Hornet MO right after it was it by the tornado.

http://www.lightningboy.net/content/hornet-mo-tornado-aftermath-and-rescue-footage

 

[Bill Hark]

For those who forecasted and had northeastern Oklahoma/SE Kansas as a target, what made you pick that area? Myself and a number of other chasers picked SW Oklahoma or areas in AR. I am asking from a meteorological viewpoint since some may have picked NW Oklahoma because of better roads or it was close to their house.

I am saddened by the loss of life and damage yesterday and hoping today is not as bad.

Bill Hark

 

[Mike Smith]

Bill,

I picked southeast Kansas because:

1. Warm front combined with SE KS being east to ENE of the surface low
2. Rapid pressure falls
3. High helicities (from both SPC mesoscale tools and Hark's sounding page)
4. Excellent 850/500mb crossing
5. Rapid destabilization

Unfortunately, from a photography standpoint, I was not able to safely get to the south size of the storm so we broke off the chase at Independence.

The death toll from this storm is tragic. Picher was already a sad town (the mountains of mining tailings) and, unlike Greensburg, I doubt it will come back.

Mike

 

[Mike Peregrine]

I picked it for exactly the same reasons Mike Smith mentions. As myself and several other area chasers watched RUC forecast soundings during the morning, it became apparent that an axis of instability nosed into eastern Kansas before 18z, and the RUC started forecasting initiation for a pretty sizable chunk of eastern Kansas. I liked its closer proximity to the surface low. If you go back through the forecast thread, there were several people who noticed it, including Doug Mitchell, Ben Prusia and me. I felt like the RUC was being overly optimistic on initiation that far north and didn't like anything from EMP east ... but I did think there was a decent shot at a supercell anywhere from Lamar, Missouri to Parsons, Kansas to Neosho, Missouri. I just happened to mention Neosho in that forecast just because I knew the WF would end up somewhere around there. Had no idea that's where an actual tornadic supercell would be tracking five hours later.

For me and a lot of us up north, I think we're just paying more attention to the closer option, and this time the closer option happened to be the most destructive. I was in the exact same position as Mike Smith and several others ... we just could not get south of the hook on this one. The storm was whacky in the way it was reacting to the storms off to the north, and the hard right turns were more than most chasers could handle in that terrain. I still don't regret not coring it when I chose to sit in Parsons ... because it was looking downright evil and I would have lost a windshield.

EDIT - I placed a map of my chase route along with the appx supercell track on my blog here.

 

[Jason Persoff]

This was my take before convection broke out yesterday:

Were that I were to be out there right now. SC/SE OK along the TX border (and east to AR) has become uninhibited w/ zero CIN, CAPE has exploded beyond 5000, potent SE (and almost E) winds blowing along the OK/TX border. SRH >250 in this region. Satellite shows cirrus is dissipating rapidly with trailing early Cu field in its wake. It's hard not to drool over the keyboard. The worst thing is that it's over tough terrain for chasers (though Jeff P has always had excellent luck down there). I note that no cells are thus far forecast to occur per WRF in the SE OK region, but I'd be there awaiting the nose of the dry punch this afternoon. High CAPE, decent shear...Move the whole show 500 miles west into the Caprock, and I think you'd have heaven.

It was vindicating seeing my forecast come to fruition, only then to be shattered by horrible loss of life. The WRF interesting didn't show serious convection in SE OK yesterday (though I didn't look at runs beyond 00z two days ago). But when the mesoanalysis came together yesterday late morning, there was little question where I'd have been.

 

[Jason Persoff]

Myself and a number of other chasers picked SW Oklahoma or areas in AR. I am asking from a meteorological viewpoint since some may have picked NW Oklahoma because of better roads or it was close to their house.

Bill--I'm just guessing, but I think you may have your easts and wests switched. Was your question about SE OK and that you picked NE OK? Or was the SW and NW correct?

 

[Mike Peregrine]

After going back through video, I believe I need to include a tornado in the report. I've posted a couple of grabs of what certainly appears to be a tube on the storm that was northeast of Oswego. I was moving east of Oswego on the highway when I decided to hang one camcorder out the window, as the other streamed video of the Picher storm that I was trying to catch up to. This is right about as the northern cell became tornado warned, and I believe it is another angle on Ben Prusia's photo. I think I called it wrong in my initial report, and Ben was actually BEHIND me looking straight east at this feature as I was looking northeast at it. Even the low hanging scud that Ben has in his shot can be seen in mine. I wasn't paying any attention to it at all, but got about 30 secs of it on video ... I was glued to what was going on to my south at the time. Crazy.

You can see my updated captures here.

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

For those who forecasted and had northeastern Oklahoma/SE Kansas as a target, what made you pick that area?

Bill Hark

I didn't initially pick it admittedly - I chased with Fabian, Elton, and Craig yesterday, and they were wanting to play around west of Tulsa. When we headed south down 71 and I saw all the pre-warm front crud, I got nervous and threw a wild pitch to keep heading down to the central Oklahoma/Arkansas border until they wised me up to the territory.

Nonetheless, I was still curious why they picked north given the cover and the forecasted stall in the warm front. Their reasons, which had me sold immediately:

1. They tracked the low with current observations instead of models - and observed that it would be heading toward the Kansas City area, putting Northern Oklahoma under the gun.

2. Throughout the morning trip to Tulsa, they also tracked dewpoints and noticed that the dryline was going to be a key factor, and that the cold front wouldn't sweep over it before initiation.

3. The WRF had the warm front stalling, but it was shooting up there like mad, and they didn't think it would stop until Tulsa - the reason being that the early morning "comma storms" from the low pressure system never happened, thus taking away the cork that stopped the warm front down south in the model.

4. Dews were in the upper fifties BEFORE the warm front. Moisture was obviously not going to be a problem, and given the rapid clearing that was ongoing and crawling its way to Tulsa, nor was instability going to be a problem at any point north throughout the day.

5. 0-3km was insane over Tulsa.

6. Jet by the Tulsa area, coupled with the crawling low, had them noticing that the low to mid winds would be screaming up there. We knew going in that we would be chasing bullets throughout the afternoon.

We hit Tulsa at 10 AM with intentions for an oil change, a quick drive-thru brunch, and a gas top off. We intended to head further west, to I-35, and sit 40 miles from the dryline to catch the missiles. A cell fired to our south VERY quickly, and food was forgotten as we chased the first of four warned supercells - and even heading into the winding roads in the hills and losing the morning appetizer on the Arkansas border still gave us more than enough time to return to Tulsa and twiddle our thumbs for two hours before initiation started again.

They were dead-on with their forecast, unfortunately including the fast storm motion prediction, which left us with no chance to stop and admire (and videotape) the storms, and which also left the people in the path of the northern monster without their lives, since a slower storm could have granted them much more warning.

Our actual chase summary will be up in the REPORT thread in half an hour. Our thoughts and well-wishes go to those affected by these horrible storms.

 

[Dennis Sherrod]

Wow, today all I can say is WOW after looking at the storm reports on SPC and seeing what is coming in on the network feeds.

Brandon was on the storms in SE Kansas and SW MO today and sent this footage in from Hornet MO right after it was it by the tornado.

http://www.lightningboy.net/content/hornet-mo-tornado-aftermath-and-rescue-footage

I have to commend Brandon on his video style and tactics. He is one of a smaller sized group that does not get in the way of emergency personnel doing their work. Nor does he enter the so-called private zone of the victims and those others affected by the storm. He stood back out of the way and got good video. His video was done in a professional manner, giving details of what just happened, all done without being up in someone's face for a more dramatic look.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

For those who forecasted and had northeastern Oklahoma/SE Kansas as a target, what made you pick that area?

Well I normally am a humble man, but my superior forecasting skills told me alll along that there would be a large long-track tornado along the OK-KS border. Everything was there for it. The CAPE, shear, backing surface winds. You can read about how to do this too in my new book, "Forecasting with the Master" by Mikey Gribble lol. I hope you don't believe that... I can't even keep a straight face typing it.
I'm bull****ting you there. The truth of the matter is that I wanted to chase SE Oklahoma. I thought storms firing along the dryline would have the highest tornado potential when they reached the Broken Bow, Oklahoma area. That's the honest to god truth. I chased SE Kansas instead because my chase partner couldn't leave town until later in the morning, so I decided to keep it closer to home instead of going on a long distance chase alone.
Once we decided to chase locally, there was still another decision to be made. Do we put ourselves right at the surface low occlusion where a lot of times you get a weak tornado or two or do we get a little farther South near the border. We debated this for a while and I decided that the border play was the better one. We actually started heading North for the surface low before I decided we were making a mistake and needed to turn around. We were in the process of driving South to the border area when the storm that eventually produced all the tornadoes (actually the storm that merged with the tornadic storm that formed later in the day, same thing though) formed literally right over our heads. We were about 15-20 miles north of the border at this time. The severe warned storm that fired near Wellington was due southwest of us 25 miles or so at this point. We debated on what to do because the new storm that fired over our heads was slow to get going, but we all knew the best play for the long term was to stay on the storm that was firing over our heads, so we stayed right off the backside of that for the rest of the afternoon.
Nobody expected that storm to produce a strong wedge tornado. If they say they did then they are either lying or they have a crystal ball at home. Notice that all the guys that were on this storm are local. I'm not saying that they didn't recognize some potential in this area, but I don't think many (if any of them) pinpointed this area as having the highest tornado potential because there really wasn't anything that made this area look better than SE Oklahoma. As others have mentioned, they recognized the tornado potential, but I don't think it was possible to recognize the tornado potential in SE Kansas being better than other points in the threat area. If you did you're a better forecaster than I'll ever be (which really isn't that big of an accomplishment lol).

From the standpoint of just recognizing tornado potential over this area, that was easy (vs. recognizing it as having more potential than points farther south). You had that secondary warm front where winds backed. You had a CAPE tounge extending up into this area and there was a nice overlap of the CAPE and favorable lowlevel shear (window for tornadoes). Dewpoint depressions were very low. All these paramaters that you would look at for tornadic supercells pointed towards any tail end storm in the OK-KS border area IMO. I thought that was a fairly easy call. I had no idea we would get a wedge though. I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass and try to take credit for something I didn't do.

The key to the tornadoes in SE Kansas was the backed surface winds IMO. We had SW surface winds for over an hour and the storms looked like crap when the surface winds were veered. I kept saying to Ryan that we just needed to stay on the storms until they hit the area of backed surface winds. As soon as those storms hit the wind shift, kaboom, there's your tornadoes. Watch archived radar and it's very easy to see. The storm trailing these storms collapsed right as we hit the backed surface winds. I remember that distinctly because I was all sorts of pissed about it because we couldn't catch the storms ahead of us. Right when the trailing storm collapses the second to tail end storm hooks and then right after that the tail end storm hooks and drops a strong tornado (hitting Picher). All those storms needed was a little better directional shear in the lowlevels and when they hit those backed surface winds then **** hit the fan. Never underestimate the power of directional shear (especially in the low levels).

 

[David Schuttler]

Not sure if this can go here but anyway..... The AP had a story about Picher that Yahoo posted earlier on Saturday titled: "Pollution brings end to mining town in Oklahoma"
Kind of an ironic happening.
For those not familier with the area, the town has been in a Federal buyout the last few years and it will be interesting to see how this affects everything.
Article Link

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Mikey - let me know if you post any of your radar grabs. I'd like to see them. I'll poke around on the net for some. I wished later that I would have archived a few, but there were a million things going on. Thanks -

PS - and I agree that no one was forecasting the storm of the day to end up in SE Kansas/NE Oklahoma. Most were just observing what their best option was. Initially I wasn't even going to go yesterday, as I just assumed the best stuff would be further south, moving into Arkansas quickly. Seems like things fell together at the last minute.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

I didn't save any of the radar grabs. I just went back and looped the radar for the past 8 hours on RAP after I got home.
I know there are a few sites that archive radar though. I'll see if I can dig them up. As far as the backing surface winds go I'm sure the surface analysis portion on the Severe Thunderstorm Events page will show this. I was watching it on the station plots (sensors) on XM while I was chasing, so I kept a very close eye on where winds backed. The only cue I had when watching radar (after I got home) to tell me at what point the lead storms hit the backed surface winds was the rear storm collapsing. At that point there were backed winds immediately ahead of us about 15 miles (going off surface stations) and that is approximately where the storms that went tornadic were. If you find that radar loop from yesterday before I do be sure to post it. I would like to watch it again too.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Yeah - looks like we won't be able to pull the NCDC archive for another day or so(?). Unless I'm just not smart enough to figure this out, which is not entirely out of the question.

 

[Dean Baron]

Radar grab from the Picher storm just as the storm was about to hit or was hitting Picher: